TRIBUTE TO A RIVER

ECHOES

Above all else, life in our valley was shaped by the Columbia River.
Provider of a dependable food supply, highway for early exploration,
facilitator for transport on the one hand and barrier to it on the
other, source of clean water for agriculture and industry, fountainhead of
cheap energy, threatening giant : - the river has influenced human
activities along its shores from the first tentative explorations of the
native people thousands of years ago to our attempts
to harness its awesome powers today. It is inspiring to
walk along its banks and think of all the activities which transpired here
as the millennia passed. The solitude was first broken by the light tread
of humanity which left very little impression on the land. Explorers
opened the way for the first attempts in massive extraction of wealth from
the land through the fur trade. Mineral riches were discovered and the
land was silent no more: the throb of the steam engine competed with the
squeal of the iron rail. Permanent impressions were left on the landscape.
In the blink of an eye, our valley filled with humanity and industrial
development started to shape the direction of our growth.

It is intriguing to consider this parade of human traffic along this
majestic and strategic waterway. There are so many echoes tumbling amongst
the waves. We can also contemplate the endless flow of the water and liken
it to the flow of life: - that flow within each one of us, to some distant
sea, with unknown rapids out of sight around the next bend to test our
vitality.

Living along the shores of this great river, I often think of the ghosts
which can be conjured up from the jade-green waves. Well known
passers-by like Thompson, Cox, Simpson, deSmet, Edison, and Kane mingle
with ghosts of voyageurs and miners unknown. Two ghosts which hold a
particular fascination for me are those of two travelers on the
river, who - like all of us - journeyed to meet their destiny, passing
by our windows to a very tragic journey's end. The first was David Douglas
who passed by on his monumental botanical journey of
discovery. Depriving himself of normal comforts, pushing himself
beyond endurance, Douglas almost seemed to be at war with himself. Thus it
is not surprising when we discover the end of his journey in a pit trap in
Hawaii, into which he had blindly stumbled, to be mangled
beyond recognition by a raging bull that had been caught earlier. The
second traveler passed by some 60 years later. Unlike Douglas, he was very
attached to the material comforts of life and traveled with all the luxury
money could buy. Sailing on the steamer "Columbia"
in 1893, Franz Ferdinand was on a world journey. Heir to the
Austro-Hungarian throne, he could only see a promising future
ahead. And yet he was headed for turbulent waters which sank the
Austro-Hungarian monarchy and plunged the world into the Great
War. His journey ended on June 28, 1914, to an assassin's bullet in a city
which tolled the bells of history twice: near the beginning of and
near the end of the last century - Sarajevo.

*** *** ***

We are fortunate to be located at the junction of two important rivers.
The confluence of such major rivers could not be ignored by travelers
of these historic highways and thus the Castlegar locality
became a reference point in almost every journal. It is interesting and
rewarding to compare the first-hand impressions left behind by those early
visitors. In the following pages, I have allowed as much as
possible for the travelers to relate their perceptions in their own words.
I have skipped over subject matter which is covered
in "Whispers in the
Wind", an original article for Waldie Island Trail, which the reader may
wish to peruse as an overview of the fur trade period.

*** *** ***

David Thompson was not the first white man to pass by our doorstep.
He was preceded by Finan McDonald who had ventured with a small
crew upriver from Kettle Falls on a reconnaissance trip while Thompson was
returning from the Pacific. He got as far as the
main river above Upper Arrow Lake before turning back to meet with the
returning party. So when Thompson made his first pass through our area in
early September 1811, he had some knowledge of what lay ahead. Thompson
is treated in another article of this series "Star-Gazer".

In the summer of 1812 Thompson passed by the site
of Castlegar for the third and last time; he was leaving the
Columbia District and in so doing, closing perhaps the
most important chapter of his adventurous life. There is no doubt that he
had felt a great attraction to this splendid
isolation; but the responsibility he felt to his ever-growing family
tugged heavily at him. By the time he arrived in Montreal, war had broken
out between Great Britain and the United States. Astor's isolated post
at the mouth of the Columbia was vulnerable and the resident
partners prudently sold out to the North West Company
before the first British frigate arrived. Some of the men were content
with the change; many others, however, decided to leave. So after
1813 there was an exodus of ex-employees who
were seeking the easiest route back across a still largely unknown
continent. Some kept a journal of their travels.

Gabriel Franchere was one of these men. He had most likely met Thompson
in July of 1811 and he would have known about the route
Thompson had pioneered that very year. He left Astoria on April 4,
1814 and a month later, he records his impressions of the local area:

"On the morning of the 5th of May we passed the mouth of the river
of the Coutonois. This river also flows from the south and is more or
less the same width as that of the Flatheads. Soon we entered a
lake and made camp at the upper end. This lake might be 15 leagues
long and a league and a half wide at its greatest width and is surrounded
by high hills rising from the water's edge in a natural amphitheatre which
makes a fine sight."

Ross Cox was one member of Astor's company who decided to stay
with the new North West Company. In 1817, he was headed eastward along
Thompson's route and on May 16th he arrived to the Castlegar area where he
would spend the night.

" Encamped late, near M'Gillivray's River, a fine bold stream, which takes
its rise in the Rocky Mountains, and running in nearly a
north-east direction, through the Cootonais lands, here joins the Columbia.
A refreshing breeze from the north sprung up in the evening. . . . About
an hour before we encamped we observed a large black bear in the act
of swimming across the river, which Mr. M'Gillivray wounded.
The enraged animal instantly changed its course downwards, and came
in contact with our canoe, into which it attempted to get,
by seizing the gunwale with its fore-paws. This
nearly upset us; but the foreman aimed a well-directed blow at his head
with his pole, which completely stunned it, and we succeeded in hauling it
on board. It was in rather good condition, and proved a welcome and
unexpected treat."

The party continued upriver, reaching Boat Encampment on May 27. Here a
decision was made to send seven ailing men, of which only two were
well enough to work, back to Spokane House. As they parted, the returning
men appeared dejected, fearing they would never see Canada again. Cox
relates their melancholy fate in a postscript. When they arrived
at the rapids which were to be named later Les Dalles des Morts (Rapids of
the Dead) in memory of the first disaster at this site, the weakened men
attempted to line their canoe, which was filled with all the gear and
provisions, through the rough water. The line broke and in
an instant the unfortunate men were stranded without provisions and means
of transport. Dejected, they started the long walk south.

"They were compelled to force their way through an almost
impervious forest, the ground of which was covered with a strong growth of
prickly underwood. . . . On the third day
poor Macon died, and his surviving comrades, though unconscious how soon
they might be called on to follow him, determined to keep off that fatal
moment as long as possible. They therefore divided his remains in equal
parts between them, on which they subsisted for
some days. . . . Holmes, the tailor, shortly followed Macon, and
they continued for some time longer to sustain life on his emaciated body.
It would be a painful repetition to detail the individual death of each
man. Suffice it to say that in a little time, of the seven men, two only,
named La Pierre and Dubois, remained alive. La Pierre was
subsequently found on the borders of the upper lake of the Columbia by two
Indians. . . . [At Spokane House] he stated that, after the death of the
fifth man of the party, Dubois and he continued for some days at the
spot where he had ended his sufferings, and on quitting it they loaded
themselves with as much of his flesh as they could carry; that with this
they succeeded in reaching the upper lake, round the shores of which
they wandered for some time in vain search of Indians; that their horrid
food at length became exhausted, and they were again reduced to the
prospect of starvation; that on the second night after their last meal, he
observed something suspicious in the conduct of Dubois, which induced him
to be on his guard; and that shortly after they had lain down for the
night, and while he feigned sleep, he observed Dubois
cautiously opening his clasp knife, with which he sprung on him, and
inflicted on his hand the blow that was evidently intended for his neck.
A silent and desperate conflict followed, in which, after
severe struggling, La Pierre succeeded in wresting the knife
from his antagonist, and having no other resource left, he was obliged
in self-defence to cut Dubois's throat; and that afterward he was
discovered by the Indians as before mentioned. . . .
some other natives subsequently found the remains of two of the party near
those of Dubois, mangled in such a manner as to induce them to think
that they had been murdered; and as La Pierre's story was by
no means consistent in many of its details, the proprietors judged
it advisable to transmit him to Canada for trial. Only one
Indian attended; but as the testimony against him was
merely circumstantial, . . . he was acquitted."

In 1821 the North West Company was swallowed up by the Hudson's Bay
Company. George Simpson was appointed Governor of the greatly expanded
territory and in 1824 he set out, with a critical eye, on the first of
several inspection trips through his domain. He traveled with an elite
crew of Iroquois paddlers which set records that the regular
brigades found impossible to match. As the flotilla of canoes
approached human settlements, flags were unfurled, guns were
fired, and his personal piper shattered the usual pervasive silence
with the wailing notes of his bag-pipe. Simpson flew by the mouth of the
Kootenay River on October 25th and stopped here for a hasty breakfast
on his return journey on April 16th 1825.

Following right behind him was Alexander Ross, another converted Astorian,
who was leaving the Columbia Department after over fifteen years of service. He
was a bit more observant of the local landscape:

"At the end of that distance, as we rounded a low point of woods, on the
east side of the river, we came to the Kootanais, commonly
called the M'Gillivray River . . . . The entrance of this river is
rendered remarkable by having, on the south side, one of those
delightful spots which man, in these wilds, is prone to admire; and on the
left, the remains of a deserted Indian camp. It is rendered still
more remarkable by a dike of round stones, which runs up obliquely against
the main stream, on the west side, for more than one hundred yards
in length, resembling the foundation of a wall; it is nearly as high
as the surface of the water, and is clearly seen at low water. On the
opposite or east side is a similar range, of
less extent. These are evidently the work of man, and not destitute of
ingenuity; we supposed them to be a contrivance for the purpose of
catching fish at low water . . . . On passing this
barrier, the river makes a quick and lengthy bend to the west, and opens
to more than its ordinary breadth, for a distance of ten miles.
At the elbow of this bend, on the north side, is a lofty mountain,
opposite to which are a large and a small island, delightfully situated.
The banks are low, diversified with clumps of young poplars, birch, and
alder, which give to the surrounding scenery a pleasing appearance. . . .
At a point of the west side [of Lower Arrow Lake] a number of figures
of men and animals have been rudely portrayed on the naked rocks
with red ochre; and into a large cavity, at a considerable
height above high-water mark, a number of arrows have been shot, which
remain as a menace left by some distant tribe who had passed there
on a warlike expedition."

The trans-continental highway Thompson had pioneered was followed by the
Express brigades twice a year for nearly half a century. The journey
from Fort Vancouver to York factory took roughly 150 days.
Typically, the spring Express left Fort Vancouver around the first day
of spring and reached the Columbia-Kootenay confluence in mid-April. The
west-bound Express departed in mid-summer, and passed through our area by mid-October,
although this date was quite variable as it was affected
by the impediments of the already-long leg of the return journey.
Almost always, the Express crew was augmented by Company men and their
dependents, either coming or going; or as was often the case, paying
passengers, or guests of the Company. Thus we see men which became famous
passing by our doorstep.

Accompanying the east-bound brigade in the spring of
1827 was David Douglas who was returning to England with his
precious collection which included a live eagle. He was to return
to the Columbia District twice and on his last visit he was
part way through his planned return trip via Siberia when he died
tragically in Hawaii. (See "Whispers
in the Wind")

Father Jean de Smet made his westward journey in the spring of 1846 when
he was able to accompany the crew from Jasper House who went out to
meet and assist the struggling eastbound brigade through Athabasca Pass.
He had prepared for the arduous journey by fasting for thirty days
to rid himself of his 'heavy mould'. After toiling through the pass on
snowshoes, he wrote of his frustration with the journey over mushy
snow and freezing creeks in a letter to his superior, while he was waiting
for the boats which had delivered the brigade upstream to Boat Encampment,
to turn back. The letter is dated May 10th.

"I continually found myself embarrassed by my snowshoes, or entangled in
some branch of a tree. When falling, I spread my arms before me, as one
naturally would do, to break the violence of the fall; and upon deep
snow the danger is not great,- though I was often half buried,
when I required the assistance of my companions, which was always tendered
with great kindness and good humor. We made thirty miles the first
day, and then made preparations to encamp. Some pine trees were cut
down and stripped of their branches, and these being laid on the snow,
furnished us with a bed, whilst a fire was lighted on a floor of green logs.
To sleep thus- under the beautiful canopy of the starry heavens- in the
midst of lofty and steep
mountains- among sweet murmuring rills and roaring torrents- may
appear strange to you, and to all lovers of rooms, rendered comfortable by
stoves and feathers; but you may think differently after having come and
breathed the pure air of the mountains, where in return,
coughs and colds are unknown. . . . At the foot of the mountain an
obstacle of a new kind presented itself. [The Great Portage River]
meanders so remarkably in this straight valley, down which
we travelled for a day and a half, that we were compelled to cross the
said river not less than forty times, with the water frequently up
to our shoulders. So great is its impetuosity, that we were obliged
mutually to support ourselves, to prevent being carried away by the current.
We marched in our wet clothes during the rest of our sad route. The long
soaking, joined to my great fatigue, swelled my limbs. All the nails of
my feet came off, and the blood stained my moccasins or Indian shoes.
Four times I found my strength gone, and should certainly have perished in
that frightful region, if the courage and strength of my
companions had not roused and aided me in my distress. . . . We saw
May-poles all along the old encampments of the Portage. . . . A young
Canadian, with much kindness, dedicated one to me, which was
at least one hundred and twenty feet in height, and which reared its lofty
head above all neighboring trees. Did I deserve it ? He stripped it
of all its branches, only leaving at the top a little crown: at the bottom
my name and the date of transit were written."

Father de Smet embarked and after an
uneventful journey downstream, stopped at the confluence of the
Kootenay and Columbia rivers to stake out a site for a church.

The rigours of the westbound trip in the autumn when early snows
threatened to close the high mountain passes are documented
by the wandering artist Paul Kane. He was traveling by invitation
from Governor Simpson to document a way of life that was disappearing even
as he was attempting to preserve it for posterity. The party was delayed
by snow and almost perished, as the boat crew which had been waiting for
them at Boat Encampment for over a month was just packing to leave when an
advance messenger caught them. Kane was fascinated by the Death Rapids
tragedy and commented on it in his own unique prose.
The story was obviously changing with the passage of time.

"Past the dall de more an rapped of deth thare was 2 men cilled and
eatein here from starvation thare cenew haveing ben lost and thare
parvishions run out one cilled 2 of his companions and the forth one
ascaped."

Kane does not seem to be aware that the same rapids had claimed a
much higher toll when 12 members of the Blanchet party perished there in
1838. (See "Tragedy at Death Rapids") He tallied up the total loss of
life to the treacherous waters of the Columbia River as 68; as this figure
does not seem to include the Blanchet tragedy, it is obviously low.

Unfortunately, Kane did no sketches of the local area when he passed by on
November 19th 1846 and again on September 25th of the following year. (For
more on Kane, see "Whispers in the
Wind")

With all this traffic on the Columbia, the Kootenay River remained
relatively unexplored. There were tentative efforts
at exploring the country out of Fort Colvile such as the journey along the
river in 1826 by William Kitson. In 1854 Archibald McDonald was retiring
as Chief Factor at Fort Colvile and was headed upriver on his way out to
civilization. As the river was flooding, he decided to bide his time
at the Castlegar locality until the flow subsided somewhat. To make use of
the time, he ventured up the Kootenay to visit the galena deposit at
what was to become thirty years later the Bluebell claim. The side
trip involved much portaging and took him four days. But, although the
Kootenay River had seen regular visitation by natives for thousands of
years, it remained largely untraveled by white men.
Even the natives avoided the lower canyon, preferring the much
easier route via Pass Creek and Slocan River.

The 1860's saw a transition in traffic on the Columbia River.
The glamorous fur trade period was essentially
over and the regular Express runs had ceased. Gradually boatloads
of venturesome miners could be seen
more frequently, working their way along the river as they
prospected for potential riches in the ground. The natives, who had
accepted the fur traders, as that enterprise had included them
in its operation, started to oppose the miners who simply moved in and
offered no concessions to the aboriginals who had claimed the land
as their territory for ages past. Trouble was precipitated when a
skirmish between miners and natives led to the killing of Albert Fry
near Marcus, Washington. This in turn lead to a confrontation at the
Pend d'Oreille, in Canadian territory. These events alarmed George W.
Cox
who had recently been appointed Gold Commissioner at Rock Creek, and
he journeyed to the site of the troubles to defuse the volatile situation.
On October 7th, 1861 he met with an assembled group of 27 miners and
several natives near the confluence of the Kootenay and
Columbia rivers, and addressed each group separately. He told the Indians
to be tolerant of the newcomers and "do not judge of the many by the few;
there are bad characters in all communities, even among yourselves.
If wronged or assaulted you will have the same protection as myself."
Then he addressed the miners, telling them to be careful in their dealings
with the natives, as the Government was in no position
to immediately intervene in case of trouble. "You know how all Indian
troubles originate - with the white man . . . Should the white man be the
cause of any bad feeling between you and the Indians, arrest him and
in the absence of Law deal with him as you think proper for the safety
of all. If you engage an Indian to work or pilot you about, pay him
properly, the Indians will receive in this Colony the same redress for
wrongs as the white man . . . ." The next day, in response to a request
from Francois of the Lakes nation for a land reserve
on their traditional ground at the confluence of the two rivers, Cox
placed a notice on the property to the north of the mouth of the
Kootenay and the adjacent banks of the Columbia, claiming the posted ground
as a native reserve and warning all persons not to camp or trespass on the
land.

The discovery of placer gold on several tributary streams of the
Columbia and Kootenay rivers led to a rush of newcomers to the promising
sites, starting in 1856 when the lower
Pend d'Oreille River attracted attention to the north of the border.
Miners worked their way further upriver, eventually setting off the Big
Bend gold rush of 1865. In December of that year, the relative solitude
of the valley was shattered by the first steam engine as Captain Leonard
White piloted the brand-new steamer "Forty-Nine" up the river to the Big
Bend goldfields. He was stopped by ice in the Narrows, but next year he
managed to make it all the way to the foot of Death Rapids.
Toward the close of the decade, the gold rush had subsided and the pioneer
steamer was taken out of service until she was revived to haul
supplies for Walter Moberly's survey parties in 1871. Some local creeks
also proved promising, the most productive being Forty-nine Creek (named
after the venerable steamer) which sustained considerable activity from
1867 to 1869. The 1870's, however, was by comparison a quiet decade.

All this changed dramatically when the Hall brothers discovered the Silver
King deposit on Toad Mountain late in 1886. Suddenly the Kootenay
became a convenient pathway to the
rich deposit and promising other prospects. In
1888 scheduled river service commenced from the recently-completed
transcontinental railway at Revelstoke. (See "Steamships on the Columbia")
The next one and a half decades saw a pace of exploration and development
which has not been seen in this valley and which is likely never to be
matched in the future. Within that short
period a booming steamer service was established on the Columbia and
Kootenay waterways, the first link of the southern
trans-provincial railway was built, the Canadian railway barons
locked horns with the American ones, and the
existing steamship and railway routes became trump cards for the C.P.R.
(See "A Railway From Nowhere to
Nowhere") By 1898, C.P.R.
held the upper hand: they had completed lines through the Crowsnest,
up the Slocan and down the Columbia to Arrowhead. Boldly, they pushed into
the Boundary country by extending the recently-acquired
Columbia and Western Railway to Midway. And fleets of
state-of-the-art steamers were plying both waterways, moving passengers as
well as ore concentrates and coal. Sproat's Landing came and went
(See "Sproat's Landing"), Robson shone
in its own spotlight for a decade, and Castlegar was born. Water spilling
over the falls of the Kootenay River was harnessed and records were broken
with the first transmission of
high voltage (20,000 volt) alternating current over a distance of 32 miles
to Rossland.

The role of the waterways changed. Once the primary highways
across the landscape, they came to be seen more and more as barriers
to land-based forms of transportation. In 1889 Albert McCleary started the
first ferry service across the Columbia River on what was then the Colvile
trail. In 1902 the railway bridge was completed.
McCleary's ferry was replaced by a ferry further downstream operated
by the Doukhobor community near the abandoned town-site of Waterloo. In
1917 the Castlegar-Robson ferry started operating, commencing a tradition
of service it was to provide for over seventy years. A suspension
bridge across the Kootenay River at Brilliant was built by the Doukhobor
community in 1913 and served highway traffic until the new bridge replaced
it in the 1960's.

Local industry surged ahead with the relocation of the Edgewood Lumber
Company mill to the abandoned Sproat's Landing site in 1909. For
half a century, the Waldie Sawmill employed a good portion
of the local population and saw the growing community through good and bad
times. (See "Growth of Local Industry") In 1952 the tired old mill was
bought out by the Canadian Cellanese Corporation and with the construction
of a new sawmill and pulp mill the tradition of a resource-based economy
made possible by the river continued.

Both rivers now are greatly changed. West Kootenay Power and Light Company
boldly forged ahead with complete development of the lower
Kootenay River for power production. The signing of the
Columbia River Treaty in 1964 made
possible the intensive hydroelectric development which harnessed the
Columbia's
vast potential and tamed its unpredictable waters. These
developments produced far-ranging changes, not all foreseen at the
time the projects were launched. We still are fortunate enough to
live along one of the last stretches of a free-running Columbia which
easily conjures up visions of a time when it was all like that.

The echoes are louder now. Photographers have captured the developments
of the last century and we can now see how things were, at times
with perfect clarity. We live in a
highly complex and competitive age which is driven by technological advance.
Satellites allow us to communicate instantly with any place in the world,
and enable us to calculate our position on the globe within a few metres.
What would Thompson have thought? Would he have been saddened
by the knowledge that all his meticulous and hard-won data is now so
easily achievable? And yet, in spite of all the power we have won
to manipulate the environment we are slowly reconciling to the thought
that perhaps we are presumptuous in thinking we can improve on nature:
that short-term gain has a long-term cost. And so, as we sit in the
comforts of our super-efficient homes, we tend to cast reflective glances
at simpler times and wonder at the resourcefulness and sheer determination
of the men who were confronted by the relatively unaltered world and rose
up to meet the challenge.